Hulleye Comes By!

when blacks do it, it’s looting. when white people do it, it’s finding. i think yahoo’s gettin a bit racy.

Rob Bailey and Ed Hurts go around Britain on the quest to find the rudest names of places in Britain. Britain has a history common to many islands: it is one of repeated invasion, occupation and assimilation. Each phase of this history has left its mark on our culture, architecture, language and place names. A rich mix of Celtic, Norse, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, French and Latin have made the English language a gift to poets and writers. However, the nuances and double meanings so favoured by creative writers have also led to a number of very rude place names.

It was inspired by a story of a young couple who moved out of their new home on Butt Hole road after taxi-drivers and delivery people refused to visit, believing them to be pranksters.

So anyway, here’s the list. Personal favourites are Twatt, Grope Lane, Crotch Crescent, Shitterton and I was extremely disappointed that Cockfosters did not make the list.

100 Jeffries Passage, Surrey

99 Prince Albert Court, Surrey

98 Nork Rise, Surrey

97 Brown Willy, Cornwall

96 Great Tosson, Northumberland

95 Trump Street, London

94 St. Mellons, Cardiff

93 Percy Passage, London

92 Booty Lane, North Yorkshire

91 Nether Wallop, Hampshire

90 Honeypot Lane, Leicestershire

89 Mudchute, London

88 Juggs Close, East Sussex

87 Cockermouth Green, Newcastle

86 Six Mile Bottom, Cambridgeshire

85 Cock and Bell Lane, Suffolk

84 Little Bushey Lane, Hertfordshire

83 Titlington Mount, Northumberland

82 Slippery Lane, Staffordshire

81 Hooker Road, Norwich

80 Cumloden Court, Dumfries and Galloway

79 Tinkerbush Lane, Oxfordshire

78 Ugley, Essex

77 Pratts Bottom, Kent

76 Ramsbottom Lane, Greater Manchester

75 Prickwillow, Cambridgeshire

74 Old Sodbury, Gloucestershire

73 Upper Dicker, East Sussex

72 Swell, Somerset

71 Bladda, Paisley

70 Snatchup, Hertfordshire

69 Spital in the Street, Lincolnshire

68 Shingay cum Wendy, Buckinghamshire

67 Pump Alley, Middlesex

66 Old Sodom Lane, Wiltshire

65 Long Lover Lane, Halifax

64 East Breast, Inverclyde

63 Dicks Mount, Suffolk

62 Staines , Surrey

61 Crapstone, Devon

60 Three Cocks, Powys

59 Feltwell, Norfolk

58 Pant, Shropshire

57 Balls Cross, West Sussex

56 Ogle Close, Merseyside

55 Friars Entry, Oxfordshire

54 North Piddle, Worcestershire

53 Mincing Lane, London

52 Bottoms Fold, Lancashire

51 Backside Lane, Oxfordshire

50 Winkle Street, Southampton

49 Wham Bottom Lane, Lancashire

48 Upperthong, West Yorkshire

47 Tosside, Lancashire

46 The Furry, Cornwall

45 Lower Swell, Gloucestershire

44 Lickers Lane, Merseyside

43 Honey Knob Hill, Wiltshire

42 Boghead, Ayrshire

41 The Bush, Buckinghamshire

40 Hill o’Many Stanes, Scotland

39 Grope Lane, Shropshire

38 Willey, Warwickshire

37 Happy Bottom, Dorset

36 Feltham Close, Hampshire

35 The Knob, Oxfordshire

34 Menlove Avenue, Liverpool

33 Titty Ho, Northamptonshire

32 Crotch Cresent, Oxfordshire

31 Blairmuckhole & Forestdyke road, Lanarkshire

30 Pant-y-Felin Road, Swansea

29 Beef Lane, Oxfordshire

28 Merkins Avenue, West Dumbartonshire

27 Pork Lane, Essex

26 Moisty Lane, Staffordshire

25 Wetwang, East Yorkshire

24 Scratchy Bottom, Dorset

23 Swallow Passage, London

22 Lickey End, Worcestershire

21 Bitchfield, Lincolnshire

20 Spanker Lane, Derbyshire

19 Rimswell, East Riding of Yorkshire

18 Lickfold, West Sussex

17 Dick Court, Lanarkshire

16 Beaver Close, Surrey

15 Fanny Avenue, Derbyshire

14 Cockshoot Close, Oxfordshire

13 Inchinnan Drive, Renfrewshire

12 Fanny Hands Lane, Lincolnshire

11 Hole of Horcum, North Yorkshire,

10 Slag Lane, Merseyside

9 Shitterton, Dorset

8 Back Passage, London

7 Fingringhoe, Essex

6 Muff, Northern Ireland

5 Sandy Balls, Hampshire

4 Twatt, Orkney

3 Bell End, Birmingham

2 Minge Lane, Worcestershire

1 Cocks, Cornwall

The US Airforce is pouring some cash into places which would otherwise be deemed pretty stupid.

Not for want of trying, though. Last year, the Air Force spent $25,000 on a report, titled “Teleportation Physics Study,” to examine possible ways to teleport humans and objects through space.

The military has a long history of funding research into topics that seem straight out of science fiction, even occultism. These range from “psychic” spying to “antimatter”-propelled aircraft and rockets to strange new types of superbombs.

Military-watchers have long argued over whether such studies are wastes of taxpayers’ money or necessary to identify future super-weapons, weapons that a foe might develop if we don’t.

In recent years, many physicists have become excited about a phenomenon called “quantum teleportation,” which works only with infinitesimally tiny particles. It might lead to new ways of transmitting cryptographically secure messages, some speculate, but not human beings for a long time to come, if ever.

“Experts in the field can foresee using teleportation in the area of data encryption but not (at least not in the near future) for the purpose of ‘beaming’ macroscopic (e.g., human-size) objects across” space, said Phil Schewe, a physicist, chief science writer at the American Institute of Physics and author of a forthcoming book, “Bottled Lightning,” on the history of the American electrical grid.

Schewe thinks the government is sometimes justified in funding “offbeat research,” but he is wary of the Air Force teleportation study, prepared by physicist Eric W. Davis.

If the Air Force really thinks such study could lead to actual teleportation devices, “then I would say that something is wrong with the way the Air Force allocates its research money, at least on this topic,” Schewe said.

You can download the full Teleportation Physics Study via Evan Poll’s blog (link to post) and also directly from the Federation of American Scientists site (link to PDF).

[quoted from BB]

The lawyers representing Patricia Santangelo (a suburban mom who is the first person to refuse to settle with the recording industry over a file-sharing accusation, preferring to pay a lawyer to defend her, rather than capitulate to bullying) have created a blog called RIAA vs the People where they’re keeping track of the case as it goes:

We are lawyers in New York City. We practice law at Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP.

Through the Electronic Frontier Foundation we and our firm have undertaken to represent people in our area who have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for having computers whose internet accounts were used to open up peer-to-peer file sharing accounts.

We find these cases to be oppressive and unfair, as large law firms financed by the recording industry sue ordinary working people for thousands of dollars.

We have set up this blog in order to collect evidence and input about these oppressive lawsuits.

The transcript from a hearing in Patricia Santangelo’s filesharing case shows the judge refusing to be, in Mike Godwin’s words, ‘a mere conduit steering Ms. Santangelo to the RIAA’s ‘conference center’.

MR. MASCHIO: No, all I was suggesting, your Honor, is that, if she
doesn’t come with an attorney, that the more direct way of doing this
— and this is just to facilitate things — is to deal directly with
the conference center.

THE COURT: Not once you’ve filed an action in my court.

MR. MASCHIO: Okay.

THE COURT: You file an action in my court, your conference center
is out of it. They have nothing to do with anything.

MR. MASCHIO: Okay. I’ll give her my card.

THE COURT: If you are here, you are here as an officer of the court. You’re taking up my time and cluttering up my calendar, so you will do it in the context of the Court. Maybe it will be with a magistrate judge, but you will be representing your client, not some conference center. And if your people want things to be done through the conference center, tell them not to bring lawsuits.

It’s a nice reminder that the RIAA lawsuits affect real people with real lives — even busy judges who may chafe at the role they’re being asked to play in this unfortunate, ineffective “education” campaign.

Apparently the RIAA lawsuits are self-sustaining: that is, the cost of running their shakedown operation was less than the settlements it generated, so there was no reason to expect an end to the legal attacks on thousands of Internet users.

Patricia Santangelo’s defense shifts those economics. By defending herself in court, Santangelo is causing the RIAA to fork over for attorneys to argue that she should be forced to pay up to $150,000 per act of infringement that she is alleged to have committed.

How can Santangelo afford to defend herself? She has an attorney who believes that she is innocent, and that when she is found innocent that she will be able to recoup his fees from the RIAA.

This attorney (Ray Beckerman of Beldock Levine & Hoffman) believes that he can do this for lots of RIAA defendants. If he and other attorneys make good on this, kiss the RIAA’s profitable legal shakedown goodbye: once the long-term suicide of suing customers becomes unprofitable in the short term as well, no way are the shareholders in these corporations let them go on.

We expect Ms Santangelo’s costs to be picked up by the RIAA, since (a) the copyright statute permits the Court to shift the attorneys fees to the losing party, (b) these cases were clearly frivolous and brought in bad faith, and (c) it is a matter of public interest that the RIAA be deterred from bringing more such meritless cases…

We will fight to the end. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t take on something unless I am prepared to fight to the end. Also, anyone who knows me knows that the one thing I can’t stand is a bully. The RIAA will give up long before we do, because sooner or later it will dawn upon them that their attorneys are taking them for a ride…

As far as I am concerned there should be no limit to how many people we can represent. If we have too many cases we can hire more lawyers.

Via BoingBoing

courtesy what were they thinking

shifty chris gives us direction towards how perverse the american public are and how they are manipulated by the media companies. knowledge in the fact that people tune in to such shows to get entertained rather than get informed is prepostorous, sad and shameful. as chris mentions, this is a new low in media and journalism.

I can not think of a more dispicable way to try and counter Cindy Sheehan, by pitting two mothers of dead American soldiers against each other in public forum. These two woman lost their sons… I think it is in incredibly poor taste to get they to come on the news and portray them as “Two women who lost their sons in Iraq, one mother still supports the president, while the other one thinks we should bring our troops home….”

you can read the transcript here.

most of the readers of this blog don’t have kids. will you be able to help them out with their homework when they reach grade 8? take the test and find out. post your scores and we’ll see how badly you do. oh by the way, no calculators allowed.

i found the SAT test simpler to do.

via Kottke

thanks s.

if you’re bored enough, check out my blog shares.

for all the canadians who i’m sure have recieved this email forward. hey i’ve lived here more than a third of my life. might as well enjoy it and be proud. *shrug*

1. Smarties

2. Crispy Crunch, Coffee Crisp

3. The size of our footballs fields and one less down

4. Baseball is Canadian

5. Lacrosse is Canadian

6. Hockey is Canadian

7. Basketball is Canadian

8. Apple pie is Canadian

9. Mr. Dress-up kicks Mr. Rogers ass

10. Tim Hortons kicks Krispy Kreme’s ass

11. In the war of 1812, started by America, Canadians pushed the Americans back…past their ‘White House’. Then we burned it…and most of Washington, under the command of William Lyon MaKenzie King who was insane and hammered all the time. We got bored because they ran away, so we came home and partied…Go figure..

12. Canada has the largest French population that never surrendered to Germany.

13. We have the largest English population that never ever surrendered or withdrew during any war to anyone. anywhere. EVER.

14. Our civil war was fought in a bar and it lasted a little over an hour.

15. The only person who was arrested in our civil war was an American mercenary, who slept in and missed the whole thing… but showed up just in time to get caught.

16. We knew plaid was cool far before Seattle caught on.

17. The Hudsons Bay Company once owned over 10% of the earth’s surface and is still known around as the worlds oldest company.

18. The average dog sled team can kill and devour a full grown human in under 3 minutes.

19. We still know what to do with all the parts of a buffalo.

20. We don’t marry our kin-folk.

21. We invented ski-doos, jet-skis, velcro, zippers, insulin, penicillin, zambonis, the telephone and short wave radios that save countless lives each year.

22. We ALL have frozen our tongues to something metal and lived to tell about it.

23. A Canadian invented Superman.

24. We have coloured money.

25. Our beer advertisments kick ass

BUT MOST IMPORTANT!

26. The handles on our beer cases are big enough to fit your hands with mitts on. OOOoohhhhh Canada

27. And we don’t bomb our allies.

oh yeah… and our elections only take one day.

The word ‘hack’ at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and “ethical” prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!). Note that this has nothing to do with computer (or phone) hacking (which they call “cracking”).

Here is a gallery of fascinating hacks from 1989 onwards that have been done within MIT’s campus and around by its students.

I personally was on MIT campus to see R2D2 on the great dome just days before the release of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Here is a list of the BestOf Hacks.

Classics such as the Wright Brothers flyer on the great dome, the Eye of Sauron and the One Ring to Rule them All and a memorial to the moon landing on it’s 30th anniversary.

so it’s ok if the person who was going to be killed, kill the persons who were going to kill him. ironic.

in this world of the internets, querying something on the world wide web is quite an art. google has managed to make it fairly simple to attain information, yet about 99% of us don’t even know how to reap the potential of the power that is provided by the search engine. it can sometimes be a daunting task and most people end up with rather irrelevant or obscure responses when querying for something.

how well can you google? take the test and find out. i scored 13 out of 15.

stare at the cross for ten seconds and the dots disappear. here is a page with many, many, many others.

as if there aren’t enough lure’s to trap you into smoking, now they’re giving away gold.

Top 70 Profane, Rude or Inappropriate Movie Quotes. Contains most of the classics. Caution for sensitive readers. Most are fairly profane.

an april 1960 edition of popular science had this puzzle. see if you can solve it. answers later.

thanks bb.

Joss and Summer talk “Session 416″ viral marketing videos. Various reports out of London hit today with Joss Whedon and Summer Glau reacting to questions about the “Session 416″ videos that have cropped up online in the past seven days.

(To avoid appearing to promote my own site, and because my server can get slow sometimes, what follows below is the entirety of what’s offered up so far at the link in the headline to this item.)

[Edit note: Removed link to the site this came from, since it's mine, although also the only place currently keeping track of this, but.... Heh.]

Over at the UK Browncoat Forums, a post reports: “Joss confirmed tonight at the london CSTS screening that yes it is, indeed, him being whacked by River.”

A later post to the same boards, says: “Summer saw the clip on Whedonesque.com she said. And grinned. A lot.”

Yet another post there says: “The main reason Joss said he was in the clips is because they were organised at such short noticed. They are part of an ongoing story so expect more.”

Meanwhile, a message to the “Session 416″ Yahoo! group, reports this: “Joss also said that he took the part because they made the videos so quickly that there wasn’t enough time to cast an actor. It also appears that he directed them, because he talked about doing a fall (supposedly the best the stunt co-ordinator had seen) and then calling cut while lying on the floor.”

via whedonesque.com

well seems like more than half the blogosphere has blogged about google talk and its functionality or lack thereof and reviewed it thoroughly, so i’m not gonna get into that. one thing i did find interesting though is the easter egg within which seems like not a whole lot of people have picked up on. when you click on the about button, (right click taskbar), at the bottom you’ll see “play 23 21 13 16 21 19 7 1 13 5″ in very faint font. it’s barely noticeable. the interesting thing here is that if you convert that to letters, it spells out “wumpus.game” without the inverted comma’s. if you add wumpus to your friends list, you can play the game.

as you all know, two of my favourite topics are comics and the toilet. here’s what you get when the two combine.

So you ask, how DID the fans ever reincarnate that damn show that noones seen but everyones talking about? well now, here’s a timeline.

Who are more dedicated than Trekkies?
Browncoats. That’s the nickname for fans of Firefly, the Wild West-inflected sci-fi melodrama that aired on Fox in 2002. When the show was canceled after 11 episodes, the Browncoats began building Web sites, emailing petitions, even holding charity events. Firefly creator Joss Whedon - better known for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel - knows how devoted viewers can be and has special appreciation for the Browncoats. “They understand defeat, and it has made them fight harder,” Whedon says. They didn’t win over Fox, but they got a consolation prize: Universal Pictures turned Firefly into a movie, Serenity, which opens September 30. Here’s how the Browncoats rode in like the cavalry. (They also do crazy things like making every ship on Firefly out of LEGO). (Oh also, River is really, really freaky but cool).

Firefly: From Birth to Rebirth

DECEMBER 2001: Fox announces the new Whedon show. Speculation about it begins at Fireflyfans.net and Firefly: The Premiere Fansite.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2002: Fox decides not to air the pilot, throwing a wrench into Whedon’s narrative. Ratings are mediocre.

OCTOBER 2002: Fans smell trouble. They launch Firefly: Immediate Assistance site and send postcards to Fox and its advertisers.

DECEMBER 9, 2002: Fans buy a Variety ad: “You keep flying. We’ll keep watching.”

DECEMBER 13, 2002: Show gets canceled before all 14 episodes are shown. Whedon posts rebuttal on a fan site: Firefly was “mistreated shamefully” by Fox.

DECEMBER 20, 2002: The pilot finally airs.

JANUARY 25, 2003: Devotees hold coat drives, donating 1,600 pieces of clothing to charity while highlighting the show’s plight.

JULY 2003: Fan site brags that presales for the Firefly DVD set put it in Amazon.com’s top 5.

DECEMBER 9, 2003: Firefly is released on DVD ($50) and sells more than 200,000 copies over the next six months.

FEBRUARY 2004: Universal announces it will produce the feature film Serenity.

JULY 2004: Whedon and the Serenity cast rock San Diego’s Comic-Con, with SRO crowds.

OCTOBER 2004: Whedon ends his TV production deal with Fox.

JUNE 2005: As a thank-you to fans, Universal stages sneak previews of Serenity in 35 cities.

JULY 22, 2005: Sci Fi Channel begins airing Firefly, including previously unseen episodes.

SEPTEMBER 30: Serenity opens in theaters nationwide.

thanks wired and slashdot.

Bill Moyer, 73, wears a “Bullshit Protector” flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

another robot story. this time, the president of japan gets attacked. sign of the times?

over up at the keyhole community, we get wind of the fact that over a 100 new cities have been remapped for google earth. this time it includes karachi which is at 1 foot per pixel. thats mighty darned sharp.

here is my home in karachi. unfortunately the resolution on google maps isn’t as great as it is on google earth. so anyone who has google earth, give it a shot.

cities added include:

0 .7m/pixel
Aguas Calientes, Amman, Anchorage, Athens, Baghdad, Barcelona, Basra, Belgrade, Belo Horizonte, Boise City, Brasillia, Brisbane, Canberra, Cape Town, Casablanca, Durban, Fairbanks, Fortaleza, Guadalajara, Halifax, Helena, Honolulu, Istanbul, Karachi, Las Vegas, Lima, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Madrid, Naples, Perth, Quebec, Regina, Reval, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, San Antonio, San Jose (CA), San Salvador, Santiago, Santo Domingo, Saskatoon, Skopje, Spokane, Tunis, Vancouver, Windhoek, Winnipeg

Mt. Everest

Berlin, Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, Hamburg, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Mexico City

1ft/pixel
Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Kansas City, Long Beach, Memphis, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Niagara, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, St. Louis, Washington DC

San Francisco, Cleveland, Lexington, Mobile, Seattle, Sea Island, Harrisburg, Salt Lake City

6in/pixel
Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Ft. Lauderdale, Houston, Jersey City, Las Vegas,Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, St. Paul, St. Petersburg, Tampa, Washington DC

Finally, the Google Mountain View Campus is at 1in/pixel.

maybe i should stop signing up at all these weird sites. a friend got this in the mail today. click on the image to enlarge. i found it rather amusing. i guess i should also change my status to married. heh.

so that high school that got free laptops, is in for some trouble. turns out that there is a school district near philadelphia who had a similar pilot project going on and had handed over iBook’s to all of it’s students. unfortunately 13 of the kids are being charged with felonies.

They’re being called the Kutztown 13 — a group of high schoolers charged with felonies for bypassing security with school-issued laptops, downloading forbidden internet goodies and using monitoring software to spy on district administrators.

The students, their families and outraged supporters say authorities are overreacting, punishing the kids not for any heinous behavior — no malicious acts are alleged — but rather because they outsmarted the district’s technology workers….

The trouble began last fall after the district issued some 600 Apple iBook laptops to every student at the high school about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The computers were loaded with a filtering program that limited Internet access. They also had software that let administrators see what students were viewing on their screens.

But those barriers proved easily surmountable: The administrative password that allowed students to reconfigure computers and obtain unrestricted Internet access was easy to obtain. A shortened version of the school’s street address, the password was taped to the backs of the computers.

The password got passed around and students began downloading such forbidden programs as the popular iChat instant-messaging tool.

At least one student viewed pornography. Some students also turned off the remote monitoring function and turned the tables on their elders_ using it to view administrators’ own computer screens.

Here is some good commentary on the issue.

What the parents don’t mention — but the school did in a press release— is that it wasn’t as if the school came down with the Hammer of God out of nowhere.
These kids were caught and punished for doing this stuff, and their parents informed.

Over and over.

Quoth the release:

“Unfortunately, after repeated warnings and disciplinary actions, a few students continued to misuse the school-issued laptops to varying degrees. The disciplinary actions included detentions, in-school suspensions, loss of Internet access, and loss of computer privileges. After each disciplinary action, parents received either written notification or telephone calls.”

What was the parents’ reaction those disciplinary actions? Some of them complained that — despite signing a document agreeing to the acceptable use policy — the kids should be able to do whatever they wanted to with the free machines.

“We signed it, but we didn’t mean it”?

Yes, the kids should be punished. No, a felony comviction is not the way to punish them.

The problem is that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Breaking the rules is what kids do. Society needs to deal with that, yes, but it needs to deal with that in a way that doesn’t ruin lives. Deterrence is critical if we are to ever have a lawful society on the internet, but deterrence has to come from rational prosecution. This simply isn’t rational.

thanks bruce.

so first we had the the female android. next we came to the robot roommate. after that we brought you the robot to play catch with. now it seems that robots can fall and get up all on their own with no prob. you think that it seems like childplay, not really for a humanoid robot weighing in at 60 kg named R. Daneel. here is a link to the new scientist article about the bot, and here is a link to the 13MB mpg video.

more desert survival tips. here’s one on how to make water if you so have the inclination. and i’m sure you will if you’re stuck there.

thanks bawany.